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Excerpt from Critical Incident Stress ManagementSynonyms, Key Words, and Related Terms: CISM, CISD, CIS, debriefing, defusing, crisis intervention, burnout, PTSD, impairment, disaster, LODD, line of duty Please click here to view the full topic text: Critical Incident Stress ManagementStress, a ubiquitous part of life, results from the totality of all that humans experience. The decisions that people make both sharpen and dull stress. Stress is part of what makes people both alive and human.People experience stress from physiologic and emotional perspectives. External pressures placed upon any organism alter physiologic pathways. Thus, the body produces more heat when the environment is cool; when the environment is hot, the body cools. Internal pressures also affect the organism’s functioning. When substrate is low (ie, sugar, oxygen, water), the organism seeks and absorbs more. In the vast animal kingdom, the complexities of their brains make humans unique. Humans can respond to physiologic urges and can make judgments regarding them. Humans not only interact within their environment but also deliberately alter it. People not only observe events but also make judgments about them. They not only remember experiences but also learn from them. All people react and respond differently to the many varied stresses in their lives. Reactions extend from the knowledge and experience of the individual and are altered by the person’s level of physiologic and emotional fatigue. Traumatic experiences are long remembered by involved individuals. Those experiences can affect people in ways that alter their future functioning. Severe vehicular accidents may cause individuals to always avoid certain intersections. Death of loved ones may lead individuals to become anxious when they enter hospitals. Stress is not unique to emergency workers, whether they are paramedics, nurses, or physicians. In fact, the uniqueness of all emergency workers, including police officers, dispatchers, firefighters, and rescue personnel, causes them to react differently to traumatic stress. Certain critical incident stressors ultimately can alter individuals' abilities to perform their jobs or merely to achieve satisfaction with their personal lives. Dedicated to the emergency medical worker, this article not only addresses the concept of stress in general but also specifically discusses critical incident stress (CIS) and why it is an important part of emergency medical workers’ lives. Finally, this article reviews the process of managing stress and CIS. Emergency medical workers have selected a highly rewarding, yet highly demanding, field in which to work. Daily, they place themselves in all sorts of danger, ranging from personal violence and exposure to disease, to gruesome imagery and bone-weary fatigue. Without emergency medical workers, society would not function as well, resulting in an adverse effect on people’s lives and an increase in suffering. Emergency medical workers have chosen to be a part of an important safety net in society. While they select the setting in which to practice, they do not choose what comes through the doors. If CIS is allowed to affect workers adversely, they become less effective in their jobs and personal lives. This can lead to harm not only to patients but also to emergency medical workers and their families Please click here to view the full topic text: Critical Incident Stress Management |
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